As the city of Palo Alto is already grappling with the suicides of three high school students since spring, a fourth teenager at Gunn High School took his own life near the same spot late Monday night by stepping in front of a Caltrain.

The latest death renewed the shock and sense of helplessness throughout the community.

And there was disagreement among officials on how much information to disclose about the latest suicide amid concerns that publicity was somehow contributing to the tragic trend.

Palo Alto police Sgt. Dan Ryan would say only that the victim was a male struck by a train about 50 yards south of the West Meadow Drive crossing in Palo Alto.

“We’re trying to avoid creating a greater cluster of these,” Ryan said. “The research we’re being told is that the more we talk about it and romanticize it, the easier it is that mentally ill or depressed people will make that leap. We’re taking a stand and not releasing more information.”

Kathleen Ruegsegger, a school district spokeswoman, also said there would be “no statement from the district or the school.”

But Caltrain spokeswoman Christine Dunn said the victim was a 16-year-old Gunn High School student, who was fatally struck by a southbound train at 10:50 p.m.

The Gunn principal sent out an e-mail to the school community identifying the student and the schools he attended over the years at Palo Alto Unified. She also urged others who felt distraught to reach out to counselors on campus.

“We at school are all struggling to come to terms with this incomprehensible loss,” Principal Noreen Likens wrote in her e-mail.

The Mercury News is not naming the boy to respect the family’s request for privacy.

Monday night’s suicide comes on the heels of two other Gunn High students who killed themselves in the spring on the train tracks, and a third who was about to start at Gunn in August. Ryan said he knew of “six to eight” more attempts that were prevented.

Four of this year’s 13 fatalities along the Caltrain tracks stretching from San Francisco to Gilroy occurred at the same Palo Alto crossing.

Suicide clusters among teens aren’t unique to any geographic or socio-economic boundaries. For instance, a rural county in Nebraska had nine teenage suicides in less than two years.

Fourteen suicides were reported last year in a small town in Wales. And even in Santa Clara County, there were 32 suicides of people between the ages of 13 and 24 reported from January 2008 to August 2009. At the time, five were from Palo Alto, and 18 were from San Jose.

On Tuesday morning, some students gathered in Gunn High School’s courtyard, crying and talking quietly. Some wrote messages such as, “All you need is love” in chalk in the ground. But they declined to speak to reporters.

Coincidentally, two public meetings to discuss the previous suicides had already been scheduled for today.

The first is for mental health professionals and clergy at the SamTrans administration building at 1250 San Carlos Ave. in San Carlos.

The Palo Alto Council of PTAs, along with Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and Adolescent Counseling Services, are hosting a forum at the Cubberley Community Center, 4000 Middlefield Road, in Palo Alto beginning at 6:30 p.m. Counselors, hospital workers and psychologists will speak at 7 p.m., and the audience can ask questions until 8:30 p.m.

Rob Keim, a deacon at St. Mark’s Church in Palo Alto, said he’d like to attend a meeting, share information and meet with others struggling with the same pressing issue everyone in his city seems to be talking about.